Friday, November 9, 2012

Real
estate mogul David Siegel founded Westgate Resorts back in the
Seventies and went on to strike it rich selling luxury
time shares in 28 locations around the country. Unfortunately, his
obsession with work took a toll on his first marriage, but after a
messy, decade-long divorce battle, he started another family with a
gorgeous trophy wife 30 years his junior.

The
74 year-old CEO now has 7 children with Jackie, 8 if you count her
orphaned niece they adopted. Although Siegel was already
keeping his flamboyant, young spouse in the lap of luxury, against his
better judgment he also agreed to build her the biggest and most
expensive single-family home in the United States.

A replica of Louis XIV’s 17th
Century Palace of Versailles, plans for the sprawling, 90,000
square-foot estate included 10 kitchens, a grand ballroom with a
staircase at either end, a skating rink, a bowling alley, a health spa,
tennis courts, a baseball field, a performance theater, maids
quarters, etcetera. But when the real estate bubble burst in 2008, the
economic recession took a terrible toll on Siegel’s entire empire.

Not
only did he have to lay off 7,000 corporate employees at Westgate
Resorts, but he also had to scale back his on his lavish
lifestyle. The household staff shrank from 19 to 4, the kids were moved
from private to public schools, and the family started flying on
commercial airliners instead of by a private Gulfstream jet. In
addition, the dream mansion project had to be halted halfway
to completion when the bank threatened to foreclose on the property.

The
stress started taking a toll on the Siegel marriage, too, especially
after David tried to put Jackie on a budget. And when
the reckless 43 year-old failed to implement some of the suggested
cost-cutting measures, he went so far as to threaten to trade her in for
a couple of cute 20 year-olds.

All of the above was captured on camera by Lauren Greenfield, the masterful director of The Queen
of Versailles. The dysfunctional family documentary
is compelling because it invites the audience to see just how
decadently the other 1% lives which only makes it that much easier to
take pleasure
in their subsequent misfortunes.

A brilliant biopic which elicits an emotional response that’s the epitome of schadenfreude!

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The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.